Four Day Work Week - 16 Reasons It's a Good Idea

The Four Day Work Week: Sixteen Reasons Why This Might Be an Idea Whose Time Has Come - This article from theoildrum.com makes the argument that a four day work week would have at least 16 benefits to each of us and our economy. Written by Kyle Saunders (associate professor of political science at Colorado State University) the article gives some detail and statistics for each reason, so do read the original article, but the points below give the gist.

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4-Hour Workweek - Quotes

My favorite quotes from 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Unless otherwise attributed, all quotes direct from the author.

Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

Most inputs are useless and time is wasted in proportion to the amount of time that is available.

A task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. ~ Parkinson's Law

Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing...

Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.

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Information Diet

I started an information diet about a week ago, based on the advice in Timothy Ferriss' book Four-Hour Workweek. Gone from my diet are the usual reddit and digg snacks. No news on TV or radio or "the Internets", not even NPR. It's all too much information--too much noise--that clutters my mind AND interrupts my day.

It's the interruptions that are the time killer. I'm accomplishing so much more, both at work and home. At work, not because of reddit or digg, but because I'm focusing on not letting myself get interrupted by email or instant messaging. Instead, I set about a task, and complete it before checking email or replying (for the most part) to instant messages. It's worked extremely well. It's the interruption that kill productivity. Many think multi-tasking is a good and admirable thing. Bullocks! Multi-tasking reduces productivity (if that's an important measure) and greatly increases stress. Interruptions disorient you, take your attention away from your task, so that you have to waste time re-orienting yourself to where you left off. Nuts to that.

Here are a couple things Ferris said that really struck me...

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Timothy Ferriss Recommended Books

Timothy Ferris Recommends Books - These are a few of the books recommended by Ferris in his The 4-Hour Workweek book.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferris
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

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4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris

Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss - Status-quo shattering book. I read it through once, and am starting over. The concepts are simple. Deferred living (retirement) is the worst kind of insurance. Live now. Forget abstract goals. Go for what excites you. In fact, go for specific, unreasonable goals that excite you. There's too much competition for the mediocre goals. Less competition for the unreasonable goals (John Nash was wrong; in a pick-up bar, everyone is pursuing the 8's, not the 10's.)

Ferriss makes a four hour workweek seem attainable. It takes discipline. It takes a low information diet and focusing on two principles or laws...

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Slow Dance - Poem of Terminally Ill Girl

A terminally ill girl wrote this poem...or so the story goes. I picked the poem up from the status-quo-shattering book The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Whether a terminally ill girl wrote it or not, it does make you think...

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